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"This year, the minimum admission score for Licheng Vocational School is 491 points, which is 41 points higher than that of ordinary high schools. Compared with last year when it was 1 point higher than that of ordinary high schools, this year has seen a significant improvement. Our enrollment is getting better and better, and the registration is very popular." On July 20, Jiang Changai, principal of Jinan Licheng Vocational Secondary School, told reporters.

This is not an isolated case. According to Chen Zhihao, director of the Vocational Education Division of the Provincial Department of Education, in the past three years, 93,700 students in Shandong who passed the junior high school entrance examination chose vocational schools, 107,400 students who met the college entrance examination line chose vocational schools, and 46,000 students in regular high schools transferred to vocational schools.

The dead-end road for vocational education is opened

An important reason why more and more students choose vocational schools is that the dead-end road of vocational education has been opened up. After students go to vocational schools, they have enough channels to continue to move up in Shandong.

On July 12, Pan Rongxian, a graduate of Licheng Vocational and Technical School, was admitted to the undergraduate computer science and technology major of Qilu Normal University in the early admission batch as an outstanding skilled talent in the province.

When Pan Rongxuan took the high school entrance examination in 2021, he only scored 329 points, which made him feel confused about his future, so he had to come to Licheng Vocational School. Unexpectedly, his expertise was brought into play here and became the wings for him to soar upward. He has liked to study Internet knowledge since he was a child, and Licheng Vocational School has sufficient teaching staff in this regard. After sufficient learning and accumulation in school, he participated in the "Internet + WiFi Mobile Internet" event of the Shandong Vocational College Skills Competition and won the first prize. He thus obtained the precious opportunity to be exempted from the "skills" and "professional knowledge" tests in the spring college entrance examination, and was finally admitted to Qilu Normal University with a score of 71 points above the undergraduate admission control line in the spring college entrance examination.

In vocational schools, students' special skills become a help in the college entrance examination. This makes many students who accidentally scored low in the high school entrance examination and have their own interests and hobbies choose vocational schools.

This stems from the province's continued deepening of reforms in the field of vocational education. As early as 2012, the province established a spring college entrance examination system, focusing on students from secondary vocational schools in the province. In 2020, with the support of the Ministry of Education, Shandong took the lead in the country to explore and establish a "cultural quality + vocational skills" vocational education college entrance examination system, thereby replacing the "spring college entrance examination". In the "cultural quality + vocational skills" college entrance examination structure, the weight of vocational skills test scores is not less than 50% in principle, which allows a large number of students with vocational skills to benefit in the college entrance examination.

In addition, it is stipulated that outstanding contestants in the National Vocational School Skills Competition, China Skills Competition, and World Skills Competition, as well as technical and skilled talents with outstanding contributions, can be recruited separately to receive undergraduate-level vocational education.

Our province has also promoted the integration of vocational and general education and implemented the "five-year integrated system", "3+2" and "3+4" through-train training, which have benefited a large number of students.

"This is equivalent to building an 'overpass' for the growth of vocational education talents. Vocational school students can go to higher vocational colleges and undergraduate colleges, as well as applied universities." Chen Zhihao said.

According to statistics, driven by this reform, the number of applicants for Shandong Vocational College Entrance Examination has increased from less than 40,000 in 2012 to 276,000 in 2024. Many people also continue their studies from this point on. Xu Haozhen, who graduated from Licheng Vocational School, was admitted to Shandong Jiaotong University for undergraduate studies. After graduating from undergraduate studies in 2022, he was admitted to Shandong University's School of Mechanical Engineering for a master's degree.

The major is more "down-to-earth" and students are more likely to find jobs

It is a bit surprising to say that the employment rate and enterprise satisfaction of Qingdao Port Vocational and Technical College graduates have remained above 98% for many years.

Qingdao Port Vocational and Technical College is known as the "Huangpu Military Academy for Port Workers". Graduates of this school can be found in major ports along the coast and rivers of my country, from Dandong Port in Liaoning in the north to Fangchenggang Port in Guangxi in the south. The high employment rate comes from the school-running system and mechanism of "coexistence of school and port, and deep integration of industry and education". The college focuses on the intelligent and information-based development of modern ports, and has set up "nine departments, one department and one center" to train students close to the needs of the industry.

Vocational education will support the development of the industry. Our province is one of the first pilot provinces for industry-education integration in the country. 14 provincial departments jointly issued the first mixed-ownership school-running policy in the country, and 11 departments jointly issued the first "finance + finance + land + credit" industry-education integration incentive measures in the country. At present, Shandong is deepening and implementing 12 provincial-level industry-education integration communities and 50 municipal industry-education consortia.

Cultivating "new farmers" and creating new forces for rural revitalization are the tasks that our province is currently working hard on. Our province's vocational education has taken rapid action in this regard. The province has built 50 rural revitalization demonstration vocational colleges. After several years of efforts, 6 of them have been selected as national rural revitalization demonstration schools, ranking first in the country.

Increasing investment, making majors that are closely related to the actual industry into high-quality products, and cultivating high-quality students are another feature of the integration of industry and education in our province. "Our province has invested 150 million yuan to build the first batch of 3,000 provincial-level high-quality courses, 315 provincial-level planned textbooks and digital teaching resources through school-enterprise cooperation, and to build a cloud space for Shandong vocational education resources," said Chen Zhihao, director of the Vocational Education Division of the Provincial Department of Education.

Shandong has been at the forefront of vocational education in China since the 1980s. Looking back, Shandong's vocational education has delivered excellent results: an average of more than 600,000 high-quality workers and technical talents are trained and sent out each year, and the employment rate of graduates has remained above 95% for many years. More than 70% of the new employees in the province's "top ten" advantageous industrial clusters and other fields come from vocational colleges.

(Reporter Wang Yuan of Dazhong Daily and Dazhong News Client, correspondents Liu Aijun and Xu Wenxuan)